Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A cartoonist known for savage caricature with wild ink blots, and collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson on Gonzo reportage.
On the island
Eight records
Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, Hob. VIIe:1
My first piece of music is really I I decided that my music on a desert island would have to either move me To laughter or to tears, one or the other, or to some kind of nostalgia. And so I chose Toby Rix playing Haydn's concerto for trumpet and orchestra. And it's played on an instrument of his own invention, the Totorix.
I've uh loved Neil Young ever since I first heard this L P Harvest, and I used to sing them myself in high school younger. And I love this song, Old Man. Uh I think it expresses um how I'm just beginning to feel now, actually.
And he's singing here uh one of Mark Knoppler's songs, uh Brothers in Arms, and it's another song. It just moves me and it also brings me to the barricades.
William Burroughs reciting his version of A Thanksgiving Prayer with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, And it's quite strong meat. It is strong meat because I I yes, but I but it it it's so uplifting in its way. Beca and it it's it's protest again.
Wish You Were HereFavourite
Well, my I must choose something from my dear son Theo, who's a got a beautiful voice, like his father. And he's my he's he's playing one of his own compositions, Wish You Were Here, and I'd love to have that, because I would wish all my children and my wife to be there on this desert island of mine
A Child's Carol (from The Plague and the Moonflower)
Amon O'Dwyer and John Williams
The treble Amon O'Dwyer, accompanied by John Williams, on the guitar, singing part of A Child's Carol from The Plague and the Moonflower, written by my Castaway Ralph Stedman, with music by Richard Harvey.
Kyrie (from Missa Solemnis, Op. 123)
Monteverdi Choir, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner
Well, uh, it's called it's from Beethoven's Mr. Solemnis, and I actually in the seventies started writing what I thought would eventually become some kind of animated film called Beaver, a saga of wild ambition.
I love this woman's voice. Norma Waterson actually has a l a lived-in voice and I chose this record too because it makes me feel sad and makes me feel for some folk who I often see and think, although I like drink myself, that in a certain state of it it creates in me a uh a sense of um fear.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Is all that savagery and grotesque distortion in your work your aggression?
It's a fraud. It's a savage front, actually, just just to l make people think that I actually am in control and I'm not in control of anything.
Presenter asks
1:32What are you frightened of?
Uh that's why people have fear, you know, and particularly psychological fear, because they don't know what they're frightened of, but they just know they're frightened of something. And what I try to do is to draw it in some of the the more extreme [kinds of drawing which I do].
Presenter asks
2:11Why did you refuse to draw the faces of politicians?
Uh I I think it was a mark of disrespect. You know, I really wanted people to feel uh that I really disliked them intensely, and drawing their knees and their legs was much more insulting somehow.
Presenter asks
3:02Why were you frightened of Richard Nixon when you were drawing him?
The keepsakes
The book
Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology
Robert Graves (Introduction)
I think that it would give if I'm going to be on this desert island, if I'm going to be creating this a sort of a new civilization, as it were, of one. I would be a god. And I would be building effigies to give me something to believe in. And I'd like to have the mythology to delve into, to recreate various legends, if you like, around myself, perhaps.
The luxury
a bag of chisels, which might seem ridiculous, but in fact if I'm going to build and fashion icons, I need chisels to I can make a hammer.
I just felt that he represented a threat to the status quo in the world. He was... manipulating a constitution which was there to protect people, and the people were not being protected, they were being used, manipulated, and eventually destroyed.
Presenter asks
9:55Why should you care so deeply about the American dream going wrong?
Uh I suddenly took it very personally because I I saw I saw America as a screaming lifestyle. I took offence at it in a way that in a way I I I think I was brought up by moth my mother to be let her heart to be um... Rather moral... boy, you know, law abiding, shall we say. And um the idea that that people were lying and cheating in high places... It really offended me in a way that I thought I'm I'm here to do something I'm here on... On a mission.
Presenter asks
23:15Is there a serious artist often trying to get out of cartoonists?
Yeah, I think I wanted to be an artist of some but I want to be the artist on my terms. My terms are that I don't see the difference between the kind of art I do and the kind of art an artist says he does. I'm expressing myself with the visual image and sometimes it takes on an intellectual context. It's not altogether just a gag line that says, oh, that's fun, I'm gonna leave it at that. It's trying to get somewhere and to say something in a way that possibly cannot be said in words.
“I really wanted people to feel uh that I really disliked them intensely, and drawing their knees and their legs was much more insulting somehow.”
“I've always said since then That authority is the mask of violence, and I've used it in a cartoon or two in mine.”
“I'm expressing myself with the visual image and sometimes it takes on an intellectual context. It's not altogether just a gag line that says, oh, that's fun, I'm gonna leave it at that. It's trying to get somewhere and to say something in a way that possibly cannot be said in words.”